Piers Marlowe - Promise to Kill - Thriller Book Club - 1965 - Leonard Gribble, Leo Grex, Louis Grey, Landon Grant, Dexter Muir, Bruce Sanders

 

Piers Marlowe* - Promise to Kill - Thriller Book Club - 1965

*Piers Marlowe is one of a number of  pseudonyms used by the writer Leonard Gribble, best remembered for his true crime and crime fiction titles.

First, a quick grumble. 

At the start of this book, a man is walking through the countryside with a shotgun. His intention is to kill another man.  He stops to watch a bird of prey hunting. It seems a funny moment for nature appreciation but as he`s a character in a novel and is himself hunting prey of his own, we`ll let it pass. 

Musing on life some more, his thoughts turn to industrial relations. It seems wholly unlikely that such considerations would occupy his mind at that moment. 

In my personal view, it can be unwise to introduce social/political concerns into the thoughts/speech of a fictitious character. If, as I suspect, the intention is to show that this particular character is a bit `different between the ears` then it seems to me that the result is just to confuse the reader. 

If the intention is either to promote or disparage the views expressed, then putting them into the thoughts of a fictitious character is still likely to leave the reader unclear about the authors` intentions, especially if the characters` motivations are to say the least ambivalent. 

Anyway, we`ll move on from that.

The problem with this book is not the underlying story, which is actually a particularly strong one. The problem is that the story is badly told.  

I did not expect to be saying that about a book written by Leonard Gribble, a writer  who is widely respected and to whom I am generally well-disposed, but there it is. I actually came to wonder whether it was correct that Piers Marlowe and Leonard Gribble were one and the same person, but apparently this is the case.  

Ultimately, if you are tempted to sample some of Mr Gribbles` fiction, I would suggest you search around, perhaps try reading a couple of online reviews before making your selection (there are a few very interesting ones on a blog named `Mysteries Ahoy !` that you may find helpful).   

Strangely, despite his considerable experience as a writer, Mr G/Marlowe emerges as a man with a story to tell, but in this instance I cannot claim that he tells it well. 

He is a writer with many better books to his credit and I`d suggest seeking out one of the others and giving this one a miss.